[MUD-Dev] The effects of object oriented servers on the item database

[Bryce Harrington]

On Tue, 8 May 2001, Chambers wrote:

> How would you implement a database for the object hierarchy?  Since
> each derived object would have different properties, you would need
> very large databases, right?  Does anyone have any tricks or
> articles about this? Maybe even an example?

There are particular databases that are object oriented and useful for
such things.

However, that is most likely the wrong answer.

As has been mentioned on this list and elsewhere, inheritance
hierarchies are not really the ideal solution for representing game
objects in computer RPG's.  There's probably a zillion different
solutions out there (i.e., research is good!)  But one approach would
be to create a single simple "Entity" type, which contains a list of
Parameters that describe it and a list of Actions it can perform, and
then handle the different natures of each object programatically.
This is essentially the approach taken by WorldForge (add in
containerism, dynamically loadable modules to add new actions,
algorithmic grouping, and some other goodies.)

Btw, it so happens that this exact design strategy (object hierarchies
vs. something more uniform) is being discussed on WorldForge's C++ and
game programming training list right now...

  http://mail.worldforge.org/lists/listinfo/cpptraining

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryce Harrington     bryce @ neptune.net    bryceharrington @ yahoo.com

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